GNU Grep: Print lines matching a pattern

version 2.20, 29 May 2014

Alain Magloire et al.
This manual is for grep, a pattern matching engine.
Copyright c 19992002, 2005, 20082014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections,
with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license
is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.
i
Table of Contents
1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Invoking grep. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1 Command-line Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1.1 Generic Program Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1.2 Matching Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1.3 General Output Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1.4 Output Line Prex Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.5 Context Line Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1.6 File and Directory Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.7 Other Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2 Environment Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3 Exit Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.4 grep Programs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3 Regular Expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.1 Fundamental Structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2 Character Classes and Bracket Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.3 The Backslash Character and Special Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.4 Anchoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.5 Back-references and Subexpressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.6 Basic vs Extended Regular Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4 Usage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5 Reporting bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.1 Known Bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6 Copying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.1 GNU Free Documentation License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
1 Introduction
grep searches input les for lines containing a match to a given pattern list. When it nds
a match in a line, it copies the line to standard output (by default), or produces whatever
other sort of output you have requested with options.
Though grep expects to do the matching on text, it has no limits on input line length
other than available memory, and it can match arbitrary characters within a line. If the
nal byte of an input le is not a newline, grep silently supplies one. Since newline is also
a separator for the list of patterns, there is no way to match newline characters in a text.
Chapter 2: Invoking grep 2
2 Invoking grep
The general synopsis of the grep command line is
grep options pattern input_file_names
There can be zero or more options. pattern will only be seen as such (and not as an
input le name) if it wasnt already specied within options (by using the -e pattern
or -f file options). There can be zero or more input le names.
2.1 Command-line Options
grep comes with a rich set of options: some from POSIX and some being GNU extensions.
Long option names are always a GNU extension, even for options that are from POSIX
specications. Options that are specied by POSIX, under their short names, are explic-
itly marked as such to facilitate POSIX-portable programming. A few option names are
provided for compatibility with older or more exotic implementations.
Several additional options control which variant of the grep matching engine is used.
See Section 2.4 [grep Programs], page 12.
2.1.1 Generic Program Information
--help Print a usage message briey summarizing the command-line options and the
bug-reporting address, then exit.
-V
--version
Print the version number of grep to the standard output stream. This version
number should be included in all bug reports.
2.1.2 Matching Control
-e pattern
--regexp=pattern
Use pattern as the pattern. This can be used to specify multiple search patterns,
or to protect a pattern beginning with a -. (-e is specied by POSIX.)
-f file
--file=file
Obtain patterns from le, one per line. The empty le contains zero patterns,
and therefore matches nothing. (-f is specied by POSIX.)
-i
-y
--ignore-case
Ignore case distinctions, so that characters that dier only in case match each
other. Although this is straightforward when letters dier in case only via
lowercase-uppercase pairs, the behavior is unspecied in other situations. For
example, uppercase S has an unusual lowercase counterpart (Unicode char-
acter U+017F, LATIN SMALL LETTER LONG S) in many locales, and it is
unspecied whether this unusual character matches S or s even though
Chapter 2: Invoking grep 3
uppercasing it yields S. Another example: the lowercase German letter
(U+00DF, LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S) is normally capitalized as the
two-character string SS but it does not match SS, and it might not match
the uppercase letter (U+1E9E, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S) even
though lowercasing the latter yields the former.
-y is an obsolete synonym that is provided for compatibility. (-i is specied
by POSIX.)
-v
--invert-match
Invert the sense of matching, to select non-matching lines. (-v is specied by
POSIX.)
-w
--word-regexp
Select only those lines containing matches that form whole words. The test
is that the matching substring must either be at the beginning of the line, or
preceded by a non-word constituent character. Similarly, it must be either at
the end of the line or followed by a non-word constituent character. Word-
constituent characters are letters, digits, and the underscore.
-x
--line-regexp
Select only those matches that exactly match the whole line. (-x is specied
by POSIX.)
2.1.3 General Output Control
-c
--count Suppress normal output; instead print a count of matching lines for each input
le. With the -v (--invert-match) option, count non-matching lines. (-c
is specied by POSIX.)
--color[=WHEN]
--colour[=WHEN]
Surround the matched (non-empty) strings, matching lines, context lines, le
names, line numbers, byte osets, and separators (for elds and groups of
context lines) with escape sequences to display them in color on the termi-
nal. The colors are dened by the environment variable GREP_COLORS and
default to ms=01;31:mc=01;31:sl=:cx=:fn=35:ln=32:bn=32:se=36 for bold
red matched text, magenta le names, green line numbers, green byte osets,
cyan separators, and default terminal colors otherwise. The deprecated envi-
ronment variable GREP_COLOR is still supported, but its setting does not have
priority; it defaults to 01;31 (bold red) which only covers the color for matched
text. WHEN is never, always, or auto.
-L
--files-without-match
Suppress normal output; instead print the name of each input le from which
no output would normally have been printed. The scanning of each le stops
on the rst match.
Chapter 2: Invoking grep 4
-l
--files-with-matches
Suppress normal output; instead print the name of each input le from which
output would normally have been printed. The scanning of each le stops on
the rst match. (-l is specied by POSIX.)
-m num
--max-count=num
Stop reading a le after num matching lines. If the input is standard input
from a regular le, and num matching lines are output, grep ensures that
the standard input is positioned just after the last matching line before exiting,
regardless of the presence of trailing context lines. This enables a calling process
to resume a search. For example, the following shell script makes use of it:
while grep -m 1 PATTERN
do
echo xxxx
done < FILE
But the following probably will not work because a pipe is not a regular le:
# This probably will not work.
cat FILE |
while grep -m 1 PATTERN
do
echo xxxx
done
When grep stops after num matching lines, it outputs any trailing context lines.
Since context does not include matching lines, grep will stop when it encounters
another matching line. When the -c or --count option is also used, grep
does not output a count greater than num. When the -v or --invert-match
option is also used, grep stops after outputting num non-matching lines.
-o
--only-matching
Print only the matched (non-empty) parts of matching lines, with each such
part on a separate output line.
-q
--quiet
--silent
Quiet; do not write anything to standard output. Exit immediately with zero
status if any match is found, even if an error was detected. Also see the -s or
--no-messages option. (-q is specied by POSIX.)
-s
--no-messages
Suppress error messages about nonexistent or unreadable les. Portability note:
unlike GNU grep, 7th Edition Unix grep did not conform to POSIX, because it
lacked -q and its -s option behaved like GNU greps -q option.
1
USG-style
1
Of course, 7th Edition Unix predated POSIX by several years!
Chapter 2: Invoking grep 5
grep also lacked -q but its -s option behaved like GNU greps. Portable
shell scripts should avoid both -q and -s and should redirect standard and
error output to /dev/null instead. (-s is specied by POSIX.)
2.1.4 Output Line Prex Control
When several prex elds are to be output, the order is always le name, line number, and
byte oset, regardless of the order in which these options were specied.
-b
--byte-offset
Print the 0-based byte oset within the input le before each line of output.
If -o (--only-matching) is specied, print the oset of the matching part
itself. When grep runs on MS-DOS or MS-Windows, the printed byte osets
depend on whether the -u (--unix-byte-offsets) option is used; see below.
-H
--with-filename
Print the le name for each match. This is the default when there is more than
one le to search.
-h
--no-filename
Suppress the prexing of le names on output. This is the default when there
is only one le (or only standard input) to search.
--label=LABEL
Display input actually coming from standard input as input coming from le
LABEL. This is especially useful when implementing tools like zgrep; e.g.:
gzip -cd foo.gz | grep --label=foo -H something
-n
--line-number
Prex each line of output with the 1-based line number within its input le.
(-n is specied by POSIX.)
-T
--initial-tab
Make sure that the rst character of actual line content lies on a tab stop, so
that the alignment of tabs looks normal. This is useful with options that prex
their output to the actual content: -H, -n, and -b. In order to improve
the probability that lines from a single le will all start at the same column,
this also causes the line number and byte oset (if present) to be printed in a
minimum-size eld width.
-u
--unix-byte-offsets
Report Unix-style byte osets. This option causes grep to report byte osets as
if the le were a Unix-style text le, i.e., the byte osets ignore the CR characters
that were stripped. This will produce results identical to running grep on a
Unix machine. This option has no eect unless the -b option is also used; it
has no eect on platforms other than MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
Chapter 2: Invoking grep 6
-Z
--null Output a zero byte (the ASCII NUL character) instead of the character that
normally follows a le name. For example, grep -lZ outputs a zero byte after
each le name instead of the usual newline. This option makes the output
unambiguous, even in the presence of le names containing unusual characters
like newlines. This option can be used with commands like find -print0,
perl -0, sort -z, and xargs -0 to process arbitrary le names, even those
that contain newline characters.
2.1.5 Context Line Control
Regardless of how these options are set, grep will never print any given line more than
once. If the -o (--only-matching) option is specied, these options have no eect and
a warning is given upon their use.
-A num
--after-context=num
Print num lines of trailing context after matching lines.
-B num
--before-context=num
Print num lines of leading context before matching lines.
-C num
-num
--context=num
Print num lines of leading and trailing output context.
--group-separator=string
When -A, -B or -C are in use, print string instead of -- between groups
of lines.
--no-group-separator
When -A, -B or -C are in use, do not print a separator between groups of
lines.
Here are some points about how grep chooses the separator to print between prex elds
and line content:
Matching lines normally use : as a separator between prex elds and actual line
content.
Context (i.e., non-matching) lines use - instead.
When context is not specied, matching lines are simply output one right after another.
When context is specied, lines that are adjacent in the input form a group and are
output one right after another, while by default a separator appears between non-
adjacent groups.
The default separator is a -- line; its presence and appearance can be changed with
the options above.
Each group may contain several matching lines when they are close enough to each
other that two adjacent groups connect and can merge into a single contiguous one.
Chapter 2: Invoking grep 7
2.1.6 File and Directory Selection
-a
--text Process a binary le as if it were text; this is equivalent to the
--binary-files=text option.
--binary-files=type
If a les allocation metadata or its rst few bytes indicate that the le contains
binary data, assume that the le is of type type. By default, type is binary,
and grep normally outputs either a one-line message saying that a binary le
matches, or no message if there is no match.
If type is without-match, grep assumes that a binary le does not match;
this is equivalent to the -I option.
If type is text, grep processes a binary le as if it were text; this is equivalent
to the -a option.
Warning: --binary-files=text might output binary garbage, which can
have nasty side eects if the output is a terminal and if the terminal driver
interprets some of it as commands.
-D action
--devices=action
If an input le is a device, FIFO, or socket, use action to process it. If action is
read, all devices are read just as if they were ordinary les. If action is skip,
devices, FIFOs, and sockets are silently skipped. By default, devices are read
if they are on the command line or if the -R (--dereference-recursive)
option is used, and are skipped if they are encountered recursively and the -r
(--recursive) option is used. This option has no eect on a le that is read
via standard input.
-d action
--directories=action
If an input le is a directory, use action to process it. By default, action is
read, which means that directories are read just as if they were ordinary les
(some operating systems and le systems disallow this, and will cause grep
to print error messages for every directory or silently skip them). If action is
skip, directories are silently skipped. If action is recurse, grep reads all
les under each directory, recursively, following command-line symbolic links
and skipping other symlinks; this is equivalent to the -r option.
--exclude=glob
Skip les whose base name matches glob (using wildcard matching). A le-
name glob can use *, ?, and [...] as wildcards, and \ to quote a wildcard
or backslash character literally.
--exclude-from=file
Skip les whose base name matches any of the le-name globs read from le
(using wildcard matching as described under --exclude).
--exclude-dir=dir
Skip any directory whose name matches the pattern dir, ignoring any redundant
trailing slashes in dir.
Chapter 2: Invoking grep 8
-I Process a binary le as if it did not contain matching data; this is equivalent
to the --binary-files=without-match option.
--include=glob
Search only les whose base name matches glob (using wildcard matching as
described under --exclude).
-r
--recursive
For each directory operand, read and process all les in that directory, recur-
sively. Follow symbolic links on the command line, but skip symlinks that are
encountered recursively. This is the same as the --directories=recurse
option.
-R
--dereference-recursive
For each directory operand, read and process all les in that directory, recur-
sively, following all symbolic links.
2.1.7 Other Options
--line-buffered
Use line buering on output. This can cause a performance penalty.
-U
--binary
Treat the le(s) as binary. By default, under MS-DOS and MS-Windows, grep
guesses whether a le is text or binary as described for the --binary-files
option. If grep decides the le is a text le, it strips the CR characters from the
original le contents (to make regular expressions with ^ and $ work correctly).
Specifying -U overrules this guesswork, causing all les to be read and passed
to the matching mechanism verbatim; if the le is a text le with CR/LF pairs
at the end of each line, this will cause some regular expressions to fail. This
option has no eect on platforms other than MS-DOS and MS-Windows.
-z
--null-data
Treat the input as a set of lines, each terminated by a zero byte (the ASCII NUL
character) instead of a newline. Like the -Z or --null option, this option
can be used with commands like sort -z to process arbitrary le names.
2.2 Environment Variables
The behavior of grep is aected by the following environment variables.
The locale for category LC_foo is specied by examining the three environment variables
LC_ALL, LC_foo, and LANG, in that order. The rst of these variables that is set species
the locale. For example, if LC_ALL is not set, but LC_MESSAGES is set to pt_BR, then the
Brazilian Portuguese locale is used for the LC_MESSAGES category. The C locale is used if
none of these environment variables are set, if the locale catalog is not installed, or if grep
was not compiled with national language support (NLS).
Chapter 2: Invoking grep 9
Many of the environment variables in the following list let you control highlighting
using Select Graphic Rendition (SGR) commands interpreted by the terminal or terminal
emulator. (See the section in the documentation of your text terminal for permitted values
and their meanings as character attributes.) These substring values are integers in decimal
representation and can be concatenated with semicolons. grep takes care of assembling the
result into a complete SGR sequence (\33[...m). Common values to concatenate include
1 for bold, 4 for underline, 5 for blink, 7 for inverse, 39 for default foreground color,
30 to 37 for foreground colors, 90 to 97 for 16-color mode foreground colors, 38;5;0 to
38;5;255 for 88-color and 256-color modes foreground colors, 49 for default background
color, 40 to 47 for background colors, 100 to 107 for 16-color mode background colors,
and 48;5;0 to 48;5;255 for 88-color and 256-color modes background colors.
The two-letter names used in the GREP_COLORS environment variable (and some of the
others) refer to terminal capabilities, the ability of a terminal to highlight text, or change
its color, and so on. These capabilities are stored in an online database and accessed by the
terminfo library.
GREP_OPTIONS
This variable species default options to be placed in front of any explicit
options. For example, if GREP_OPTIONS is --binary-files=without-match
--directories=skip, grep behaves as if the two options
--binary-files=without-match and --directories=skip had
been specied before any explicit options. Option specications are separated
by whitespace. A backslash escapes the next character, so it can be used to
specify an option containing whitespace or a backslash.
The GREP_OPTIONS value does not aect whether grep without le operands
searches standard input or the working directory; that is aected only by
command-line options. For example, the command grep PAT searches stan-
dard input and the command grep -r PAT searches the working directory,
regardless of whether GREP_OPTIONS contains -r.
GREP_COLOR
This variable species the color used to highlight matched (non-empty) text.
It is deprecated in favor of GREP_COLORS, but still supported. The mt, ms,
and mc capabilities of GREP_COLORS have priority over it. It can only specify
the color used to highlight the matching non-empty text in any matching line
(a selected line when the -v command-line option is omitted, or a context
line when -v is specied). The default is 01;31, which means a bold red
foreground text on the terminals default background.
GREP_COLORS
This variable species the colors and other attributes used to highlight various
parts of the output. Its value is a colon-separated list of terminfo capabilities
that defaults to ms=01;31:mc=01;31:sl=:cx=:fn=35:ln=32:bn=32:se=36
with the rv and ne boolean capabilities omitted (i.e., false). Supported
capabilities are as follows.
sl= SGR substring for whole selected lines (i.e., matching lines when the
-v command-line option is omitted, or non-matching lines when
-v is specied). If however the boolean rv capability and the
Chapter 2: Invoking grep 10
-v command-line option are both specied, it applies to context
matching lines instead. The default is empty (i.e., the terminals
default color pair).
cx= SGR substring for whole context lines (i.e., non-matching lines
when the -v command-line option is omitted, or matching lines
when -v is specied). If however the boolean rv capability and
the -v command-line option are both specied, it applies to se-
lected non-matching lines instead. The default is empty (i.e., the
terminals default color pair).
rv Boolean value that reverses (swaps) the meanings of the sl= and
cx= capabilities when the -v command-line option is specied.
The default is false (i.e., the capability is omitted).
mt=01;31 SGR substring for matching non-empty text in any matching line
(i.e., a selected line when the -v command-line option is omitted,
or a context line when -v is specied). Setting this is equivalent to
setting both ms= and mc= at once to the same value. The default
is a bold red text foreground over the current line background.
ms=01;31 SGR substring for matching non-empty text in a selected line. (This
is used only when the -v command-line option is omitted.) The
eect of the sl= (or cx= if rv) capability remains active when
this takes eect. The default is a bold red text foreground over the
current line background.
mc=01;31 SGR substring for matching non-empty text in a context line. (This
is used only when the -v command-line option is specied.) The
eect of the cx= (or sl= if rv) capability remains active when
this takes eect. The default is a bold red text foreground over the
current line background.
fn=35 SGR substring for le names prexing any content line. The de-
fault is a magenta text foreground over the terminals default back-
ground.
ln=32 SGR substring for line numbers prexing any content line. The
default is a green text foreground over the terminals default back-
ground.
bn=32 SGR substring for byte osets prexing any content line. The de-
fault is a green text foreground over the terminals default back-
ground.
se=36 SGR substring for separators that are inserted between selected line
elds (:), between context line elds (-), and between groups of
adjacent lines when nonzero context is specied (--). The default
is a cyan text foreground over the terminals default background.
ne Boolean value that prevents clearing to the end of line using Erase
in Line (EL) to Right (\33[K) each time a colorized item ends.
Chapter 2: Invoking grep 11
This is needed on terminals on which EL is not supported. It is oth-
erwise useful on terminals for which the back_color_erase (bce)
boolean terminfo capability does not apply, when the chosen high-
light colors do not aect the background, or when EL is too slow
or causes too much icker. The default is false (i.e., the capability
is omitted).
Note that boolean capabilities have no =... part. They are omitted (i.e., false)
by default and become true when specied.
LC_ALL
LC_COLLATE
LANG These variables specify the locale for the LC_COLLATE category, which might
aect how range expressions like [a-z] are interpreted.
LC_ALL
LC_CTYPE
LANG These variables specify the locale for the LC_CTYPE category, which determines
the type of characters, e.g., which characters are whitespace.
LC_ALL
LC_MESSAGES
LANG These variables specify the locale for the LC_MESSAGES category, which deter-
mines the language that grep uses for messages. The default C locale uses
American English messages.
POSIXLY_CORRECT
If set, grep behaves as POSIX requires; otherwise, grep behaves more like other
GNU programs. POSIX requires that options that follow le names must be
treated as le names; by default, such options are permuted to the front of the
operand list and are treated as options. Also, POSIXLY_CORRECT disables special
handling of an invalid bracket expression. See [invalid-bracket-expr], page 15.
_N_GNU_nonoption_argv_flags_
(Here N is greps numeric process ID.) If the ith character of this environment
variables value is 1, do not consider the ith operand of grep to be an option,
even if it appears to be one. A shell can put this variable in the environment
for each command it runs, specifying which operands are the results of le
name wildcard expansion and therefore should not be treated as options. This
behavior is available only with the GNU C library, and only when POSIXLY_
CORRECT is not set.
2.3 Exit Status
Normally, the exit status is 0 if selected lines are found and 1 otherwise. But the exit status
is 2 if an error occurred, unless the -q or --quiet or --silent option is used and a
selected line is found. Note, however, that POSIX only mandates, for programs such as
grep, cmp, and diff, that the exit status in case of error be greater than 1; it is therefore
advisable, for the sake of portability, to use logic that tests for this general condition instead
of strict equality with 2.
Chapter 2: Invoking grep 12
2.4 grep Programs
grep searches the named input les for lines containing a match to the given pattern. By
default, grep prints the matching lines. A le named - stands for standard input. If no
input is specied, grep searches the working directory . if given a command-line option
specifying recursion; otherwise, grep searches standard input. There are four major variants
of grep, controlled by the following options.
-G
--basic-regexp
Interpret the pattern as a basic regular expression (BRE). This is the default.
-E
--extended-regexp
Interpret the pattern as an extended regular expression (ERE). (-E is specied
by POSIX.)
-F
--fixed-strings
Interpret the pattern as a list of xed strings, separated by newlines, any of
which is to be matched. (-F is specied by POSIX.)
-P
--perl-regexp
Interpret the pattern as a Perl regular expression. This is highly experimental
and grep -P may warn of unimplemented features.
In addition, two variant programs egrep and fgrep are available. egrep is the same
as grep -E. fgrep is the same as grep -F. Direct invocation as either egrep or fgrep
is deprecated, but is provided to allow historical applications that rely on them to run
unmodied.
Chapter 3: Regular Expressions 13
3 Regular Expressions
A regular expression is a pattern that describes a set of strings. Regular expressions are
constructed analogously to arithmetic expressions, by using various operators to combine
smaller expressions. grep understands three dierent versions of regular expression syntax:
basic, (BRE) extended (ERE) and perl. In GNU grep, there is no dierence in avail-
able functionality between the basic and extended syntaxes. In other implementations, basic
regular expressions are less powerful. The following description applies to extended regular
expressions; dierences for basic regular expressions are summarized afterwards. Perl regu-
lar expressions give additional functionality, and are documented in the pcresyntax(3) and
pcrepattern(3) manual pages, but may not be available on every system.
3.1 Fundamental Structure
The fundamental building blocks are the regular expressions that match a single charac-
ter. Most characters, including all letters and digits, are regular expressions that match
themselves. Any meta-character with special meaning may be quoted by preceding it with
a backslash.
A regular expression may be followed by one of several repetition operators:
. The period . matches any single character.
? The preceding item is optional and will be matched at most once.
* The preceding item will be matched zero or more times.
+ The preceding item will be matched one or more times.
{n} The preceding item is matched exactly n times.
{n,} The preceding item is matched n or more times.
{,m} The preceding item is matched at most m times. This is a GNU extension.
{n,m} The preceding item is matched at least n times, but not more than m times.
The empty regular expression matches the empty string. Two regular expressions may be
concatenated; the resulting regular expression matches any string formed by concatenating
two substrings that respectively match the concatenated expressions.
Two regular expressions may be joined by the inx operator |; the resulting regular
expression matches any string matching either alternate expression.
Repetition takes precedence over concatenation, which in turn takes precedence over
alternation. A whole expression may be enclosed in parentheses to override these precedence
rules and form a subexpression.
3.2 Character Classes and Bracket Expressions
A bracket expression is a list of characters enclosed by [ and ]. It matches any single
character in that list; if the rst character of the list is the caret ^, then it matches any
character not in the list. For example, the regular expression [0123456789] matches any
single digit.
Chapter 3: Regular Expressions 14
Within a bracket expression, a range expression consists of two characters separated by
a hyphen. It matches any single character that sorts between the two characters, inclusive.
In the default C locale, the sorting sequence is the native character order; for example,
[a-d] is equivalent to [abcd]. In other locales, the sorting sequence is not specied,
and [a-d] might be equivalent to [abcd] or to [aBbCcDd], or it might fail to match
any character, or the set of characters that it matches might even be erratic. To obtain the
traditional interpretation of bracket expressions, you can use the C locale by setting the
LC_ALL environment variable to the value C.
Finally, certain named classes of characters are predened within bracket expressions, as
follows. Their interpretation depends on the LC_CTYPE locale; for example, [[:alnum:]]
means the character class of numbers and letters in the current locale.
[:alnum:]
Alphanumeric characters: [:alpha:] and [:digit:]; in the C locale and
ASCII character encoding, this is the same as [0-9A-Za-z].
[:alpha:]
Alphabetic characters: [:lower:] and [:upper:]; in the C locale and
ASCII character encoding, this is the same as [A-Za-z].
[:blank:]
Blank characters: space and tab.
[:cntrl:]
Control characters. In ASCII, these characters have octal codes 000 through
037, and 177 (DEL). In other character sets, these are the equivalent characters,
if any.
[:digit:]
Digits: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.
[:graph:]
Graphical characters: [:alnum:] and [:punct:].
[:lower:]
Lower-case letters; in the C locale and ASCII character encoding, this is a b c
d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z.
[:print:]
Printable characters: [:alnum:], [:punct:], and space.
[:punct:]
Punctuation characters; in the C locale and ASCII character encoding, this is
! " # $ % & ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? @ [ \ ] ^ _ { | } ~.
[:space:]
Space characters: in the C locale, this is tab, newline, vertical tab, form feed,
carriage return, and space. See Chapter 4 [Usage], page 17, for more discussion
of matching newlines.
[:upper:]
Upper-case letters: in the C locale and ASCII character encoding, this is A B
C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z.
Chapter 3: Regular Expressions 15
[:xdigit:]
Hexadecimal digits: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F a b c d e f.
Note that the brackets in these class names are part of the symbolic names, and must
be included in addition to the brackets delimiting the bracket expression.
If you mistakenly omit the outer brackets, and search for say, [:upper:], GNU grep
prints a diagnostic and exits with status 2, on the assumption that you did not intend to
search for the nominally equivalent regular expression: [:epru]. Set the POSIXLY_CORRECT
environment variable to disable this feature.
Most meta-characters lose their special meaning inside bracket expressions.
] ends the bracket expression if its not the rst list item. So, if you want to make
the ] character a list item, you must put it rst.
[. represents the open collating symbol.
.] represents the close collating symbol.
[= represents the open equivalence class.
=] represents the close equivalence class.
[: represents the open character class symbol, and should be followed by a valid
character class name.
:] represents the close character class symbol.
- represents the range if its not rst or last in a list or the ending point of a
range.
^ represents the characters not in the list. If you want to make the ^ character
a list item, place it anywhere but rst.
3.3 The Backslash Character and Special Expressions
The \ character, when followed by certain ordinary characters, takes a special meaning:
\b Match the empty string at the edge of a word.
\B Match the empty string provided its not at the edge of a word.
\< Match the empty string at the beginning of word.
\> Match the empty string at the end of word.
\w Match word constituent, it is a synonym for [_[:alnum:]].
\W Match non-word constituent, it is a synonym for [^_[:alnum:]].
\s Match whitespace, it is a synonym for [[:space:]].
\S Match non-whitespace, it is a synonym for [^[:space:]].
For example, \brat\b matches the separate word rat, \Brat\B matches crate but
not furry rat.
Chapter 3: Regular Expressions 16
3.4 Anchoring
The caret ^ and the dollar sign $ are meta-characters that respectively match the empty
string at the beginning and end of a line. They are termed anchors, since they force the
match to be anchored to beginning or end of a line, respectively.
3.5 Back-references and Subexpressions
The back-reference \n, where n is a single digit, matches the substring previously matched
by the nth parenthesized subexpression of the regular expression. For example, (a)\1
matches aa. When used with alternation, if the group does not participate in the match
then the back-reference makes the whole match fail. For example, a(.)|b\1 will not match
ba. When multiple regular expressions are given with -e or from a le (-f file), back-
references are local to each expression.
3.6 Basic vs Extended Regular Expressions
In basic regular expressions the meta-characters ?, +, {, |, (, and ) lose their special
meaning; instead use the backslashed versions \?, \+, \{, \|, \(, and \).
Traditional egrep did not support the { meta-character, and some egrep implemen-
tations support \{ instead, so portable scripts should avoid { in grep -E patterns and
should use [{] to match a literal {.
GNU grep -E attempts to support traditional usage by assuming that { is not special
if it would be the start of an invalid interval specication. For example, the command grep
-E {1 searches for the two-character string {1 instead of reporting a syntax error in
the regular expression. POSIX allows this behavior as an extension, but portable scripts
should avoid it.
Chapter 4: Usage 17
4 Usage
Here is an example command that invokes GNU grep:
grep -i hello.*world menu.h main.c
This lists all lines in the les menu.h and main.c that contain the string hello followed
by the string world; this is because .* matches zero or more characters within a line.
See Chapter 3 [Regular Expressions], page 13. The -i option causes grep to ignore case,
causing it to match the line Hello, world!, which it would not otherwise match. See
Chapter 2 [Invoking], page 2, for more details about how to invoke grep.
Here are some common questions and answers about grep usage.
1. How can I list just the names of matching les?
grep -l main *.c
lists the names of all C les in the current directory whose contents mention main.
2. How do I search directories recursively?
grep -r hello /home/gigi
searches for hello in all les under the /home/gigi directory. For more control
over which les are searched, use find, grep, and xargs. For example, the following
command searches only C les:
find /home/gigi -name *.c -print0 | xargs -0r grep -H hello
This diers from the command:
grep -H hello *.c
which merely looks for hello in all les in the current directory whose names end in
.c. The find ... command line above is more similar to the command:
grep -rH --include=*.c hello /home/gigi
3. What if a pattern has a leading -?
grep -e --cut here-- *
searches for all lines matching --cut here--. Without -e, grep would attempt to
parse --cut here-- as a list of options.
4. Suppose I want to search for a whole word, not a part of a word?
grep -w hello *
searches only for instances of hello that are entire words; it does not match Othello.
For more control, use \< and \> to match the start and end of words. For example:
grep hello\> *
searches only for words ending in hello, so it matches the word Othello.
5. How do I output context around the matching lines?
grep -C 2 hello *
prints two lines of context around each matching line.
6. How do I force grep to print the name of the le?
Append /dev/null:
grep eli /etc/passwd /dev/null
gets you:
Chapter 4: Usage 18
/etc/passwd:eli:x:2098:1000:Eli Smith:/home/eli:/bin/bash
Alternatively, use -H, which is a GNU extension:
grep -H eli /etc/passwd
7. Why do people use strange regular expressions on ps output?
ps -ef | grep [c]ron
If the pattern had been written without the square brackets, it would have matched
not only the ps output line for cron, but also the ps output line for grep. Note that
on some platforms, ps limits the output to the width of the screen; grep does not have
any limit on the length of a line except the available memory.
8. Why does grep report Binary le matches?
If grep listed all matching lines from a binary le, it would probably generate
output that is not useful, and it might even muck up your display. So GNU
grep suppresses output from les that appear to be binary les. To force GNU
grep to output lines even from les that appear to be binary, use the -a or
--binary-files=text option. To eliminate the Binary le matches messages, use
the -I or --binary-files=without-match option.
9. Why doesnt grep -lv print non-matching le names?
grep -lv lists the names of all les containing one or more lines that do not
match. To list the names of all les that contain no matching lines, use the -L or
--files-without-match option.
10. I can do OR with |, but what about AND?
grep paul /etc/motd | grep franc,ois
nds all lines that contain both paul and franc,ois.
11. Why does the empty pattern match every input line?
The grep command searches for lines that contain strings that match a pattern. Every
line contains the empty string, so an empty pattern causes grep to nd a match on
each line. It is not the only such pattern: ^, $, .*, and many other patterns cause
grep to match every line.
To match empty lines, use the pattern ^$. To match blank lines, use the pattern
^[[:blank:]]*$. To match no lines at all, use the command grep -f /dev/null.
12. How can I search in both standard input and in les?
Use the special le name -:
cat /etc/passwd | grep alain - /etc/motd
13. How to express palindromes in a regular expression?
It can be done by using back-references; for example, a palindrome of 4 characters can
be written with a BRE:
grep -w -e \(.\)\(.\).\2\1 file
It matches the word radar or civic.
Guglielmo Bondioni proposed a single RE that nds all palindromes up to 19 characters
long using 9 subexpressions and 9 back-references:
grep -E -e ^(.?)(.?)(.?)(.?)(.?)(.?)(.?)(.?)(.?).?\9\8\7\6\5\4\3\2\1$ file
Note this is done by using GNU ERE extensions; it might not be portable to other
implementations of grep.
Chapter 4: Usage 19
14. Why is this back-reference failing?
echo ba | grep -E (a)\1|b\1
This gives no output, because the rst alternate (a)\1 does not match, as there is
no aa in the input, so the \1 in the second alternate has nothing to refer back to,
meaning it will never match anything. (The second alternate in this example can only
match if the rst alternate has matchedmaking the second one superuous.)
15. How can I match across lines?
Standard grep cannot do this, as it is fundamentally line-based. Therefore, merely
using the [:space:] character class does not match newlines in the way you might
expect.
With the GNU grep option -z (see Section 2.1.6 [File and Directory Selection], page 7),
the input is terminated by null bytes. Thus, you can match newlines in the input, but
typically if there is a match the entire input is output, so this usage is often combined
with output-suppressing options like -q, e.g.:
printf foo\nbar\n | grep -z -q foo[[:space:]]\+bar
If this does not suce, you can transform the input before giving it to grep, or turn
to awk, sed, perl, or many other utilities that are designed to operate across lines.
16. What do grep, fgrep, and egrep stand for?
The name grep comes from the way line editing was done on Unix. For example, ed
uses the following syntax to print a list of matching lines on the screen:
global/regular expression/print
g/re/p
fgrep stands for Fixed grep; egrep stands for Extended grep.
Chapter 5: Reporting bugs 20
5 Reporting bugs
Email bug reports to bug-grep@gnu.org, a mailing list whose web page is
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-grep. The Savannah bug tracker for
grep is located at http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=grep.
5.1 Known Bugs
Large repetition counts in the {n,m} construct may cause grep to use lots of memory. In
addition, certain other obscure regular expressions require exponential time and space, and
may cause grep to run out of memory.
Back-references are very slow, and may require exponential time.
Chapter 6: Copying 21
6 Copying
GNU grep is licensed under the GNU GPL, which makes it free software.
The free in free software refers to liberty, not price. As some GNU project advocates
like to point out, think of free speech rather than free beer. In short, you have the right
(freedom) to run and change grep and distribute it to other people, andif you want
charge money for doing either. The important restriction is that you have to grant your
recipients the same rights and impose the same restrictions.
This general method of licensing software is sometimes called open source.
The GNU project prefers the term free software for reasons outlined at
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.
This manual is free documentation in the same sense. The documentation license is
included below. The license for the program is available with the source code, or at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html.
6.1 GNU Free Documentation License
Version 1.3, 3 November 2008
Copyright c 2000-2002, 2007-2008, 2010-2014 Free Software
Foundation, Inc.
http://fsf.org/
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
0. PREAMBLE
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and
useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the eective freedom
to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or non-
commercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way
to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modications
made by others.
This License is a kind of copyleft, which means that derivative works of the document
must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public
License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because
free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals
providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to
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1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
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duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein. The Document,
Chapter 6: Copying 22
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A Modied Version of the Document means any work containing the Document or
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A Secondary Section is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document
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The Invariant Sections are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as
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Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ascii without
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E
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The Title Page means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following
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Chapter 6: Copying 23
means the text near the most prominent appearance of the works title, preceding the
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The publisher means any person or entity that distributes copies of the Document
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A section Entitled XYZ means a named subunit of the Document whose title either
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The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that
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be included by reference in this License, but only as regards disclaiming warranties:
any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no
eect on the meaning of this License.
2. VERBATIM COPYING
You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or
noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license
notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and
that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use
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If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions
in section 3.
You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly
display copies.
3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
If you publish printed copies (or copies in media that commonly have printed covers) of
the Document, numbering more than 100, and the Documents license notice requires
Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all
these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on
the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher
of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title
equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition.
Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the
Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other
respects.
If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to t legibly, you should put
the rst ones listed (as many as t reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the
rest onto adjacent pages.
If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100,
you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque
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Chapter 6: Copying 24
you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin
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remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time
you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that
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It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well
before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you
with an updated version of the Document.
4. MODIFICATIONS
You may copy and distribute a Modied Version of the Document under the conditions
of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modied Version under precisely
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distribution and modication of the Modied Version to whoever possesses a copy of
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A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the
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D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modications adjacent to the other
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Texts given in the Documents license notice.
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at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the
version it refers to gives permission.
Chapter 6: Copying 25
K. For any section Entitled Acknowledgements or Dedications, Preserve the Title
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5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
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to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined
work.
Chapter 6: Copying 26
In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled History in the vari-
ous original documents, forming one section Entitled History; likewise combine any
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6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
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You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individu-
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7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent
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an aggregate if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the
legal rights of the compilations users beyond what the individual works permit. When
the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other
works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document,
then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the Documents Cover
Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate, or the
electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form. Otherwise they
must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate.
8. TRANSLATION
Translation is considered a kind of modication, so you may distribute translations
of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with
translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may
include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions
of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License, and all the
license notices in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you
also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of
those notices and disclaimers. In case of a disagreement between the translation and
the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will
prevail.
If a section in the Document is Entitled Acknowledgements, Dedications, or His-
tory, the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require
changing the actual title.
9. TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly
provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense, or
distribute it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
Chapter 6: Copying 27
However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular
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explicitly and nally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright
holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days
after the cessation.
Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if
the copyright holder noties you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the
rst time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that
copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the
notice.
Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of parties
who have received copies or rights from you under this License. If your rights have
been terminated and not permanently reinstated, receipt of a copy of some or all of the
same material does not give you any rights to use it.
10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free
Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit
to the present version, but may dier in detail to address new problems or concerns.
See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document
species that a particular numbered version of this License or any later version
applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that
specied version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by
the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of
this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free
Software Foundation. If the Document species that a proxy can decide which future
versions of this License can be used, that proxys public statement of acceptance of a
version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Document.
11. RELICENSING
Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site (or MMC Site) means any World Wide
Web server that publishes copyrightable works and also provides prominent facilities
for anybody to edit those works. A public wiki that anybody can edit is an example of
such a server. A Massive Multiauthor Collaboration (or MMC) contained in the
site means any set of copyrightable works thus published on the MMC site.
CC-BY-SA means the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license pub-
lished by Creative Commons Corporation, a not-for-prot corporation with a principal
place of business in San Francisco, California, as well as future copyleft versions of that
license published by that same organization.
Incorporate means to publish or republish a Document, in whole or in part, as part
of another Document.
An MMC is eligible for relicensing if it is licensed under this License, and if all works
that were rst published under this License somewhere other than this MMC, and
subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into the MMC, (1) had no cover texts
or invariant sections, and (2) were thus incorporated prior to November 1, 2008.
Chapter 6: Copying 28
The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under
CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is
eligible for relicensing.
Chapter 6: Copying 29
ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents
To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the
document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:
Copyright (C) year your name.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU
Free Documentation License.
If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the
with. . . Texts. line with this:
with the Invariant Sections being list their titles, with
the Front-Cover Texts being list, and with the Back-Cover Texts
being list.
If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of the
three, merge those two alternatives to suit the situation.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing
these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU
General Public License, to permit their use in free software.
Index 30
Index
*
* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
+
+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
-
--after-context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
--basic-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
--before-context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
--binary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
--binary-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
--byte-offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
--color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
--colour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
--context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
--count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
--dereference-recursive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
--devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
--directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
--exclude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
--exclude-dir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
--exclude-from . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
--extended-regexp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
--file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
--files-with-matches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--files-without-match . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
--fixed-strings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
--group-separator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
--help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
--ignore-case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
--include . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
--initial-tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
--invert-match . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
--label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
--line-buffered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
--line-number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
--line-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
--max-count. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--no-filename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
--no-messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--null . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
--null-data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
--only-matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--perl-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
--quiet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--recursive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
--regexp=pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
--silent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
--text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
--unix-byte-offsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
--version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
--with-filename . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
--word-regexp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
-a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
-A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
-b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
-B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
-c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
-C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
-d . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
-D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
-e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
-E. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
-f . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
-F. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
-G. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
-h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
-H . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
-i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
-l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
-L . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
-m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
-n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
-num . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
-o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
-P. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
-q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
-r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
-R . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
-s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
-T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
-u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
-U . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
-v . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
-V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
-w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
-x . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
-y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
-z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
-Z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
?
? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
_N_GNU_nonoption_argv_flags_ environment
variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Index 31
{
{,m} . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
{n,} . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
{n,m} . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
{n} . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
A
after context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
alnum character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
alpha character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
alphabetic characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
alphanumeric characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
anchoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
asterisk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
B
back-reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
backslash. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
basic regular expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
before context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
binary les . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
binary les, MS-DOS/MS-Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
blank character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
blank characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
bn GREP_COLORS capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
braces, rst argument omitted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
braces, one argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
braces, second argument omitted. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
braces, two arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
bracket expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Bugs, known . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
bugs, reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
byte oset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
byte osets, on MS-DOS/MS-Windows. . . . . . . . . . 5
C
case insensitive search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
changing name of standard input. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
character classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
character type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
classes of characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
cntrl character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
context lines, after match . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
context lines, before match. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
control characters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
copying. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
counting lines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
cx GREP_COLORS capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
D
default options environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
device search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
digit character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
digit characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
directory search. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
dot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
E
environment variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
exclude directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
exclude les . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
exit status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
F
FAQ about grep usage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
les which dont match . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
fn GREP_COLORS capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
G
graph character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
graphic characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
grep programs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
GREP_COLOR environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
GREP_COLORS environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
GREP_OPTIONS environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
group separator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
H
hexadecimal digits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
highlight markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
highlight, color, colour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
I
include les . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
interval specications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
invert matching. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
L
LANG environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
language of messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
LC_ALL environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
LC_COLLATE environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
LC_CTYPE environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
LC_MESSAGES environment variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
line buering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
line numbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
ln GREP_COLORS capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
lower character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
lower-case letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
M
match expression at most m times . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Index 32
match expression at most once . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
match expression from n to m times . . . . . . . . . . . 13
match expression n or more times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
match expression n times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
match expression one or more times. . . . . . . . . . . . 13
match expression zero or more times . . . . . . . . . . . 13
match the whole line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
matching basic regular expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
matching extended regular expressions . . . . . . . . . 12
matching xed strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
matching Perl regular expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
matching whole words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
max-count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
mc GREP_COLORS capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
message language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
ms GREP_COLORS capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
MS-DOS/MS-Windows binary les. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
MS-DOS/MS-Windows byte osets . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
mt GREP_COLORS capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
N
names of matching les . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
national language support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
ne GREP_COLORS capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
NLS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
no lename prex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
numeric characters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
O
only matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
P
palindromes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
pattern from le . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
pattern list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
period. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
plus sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable . . . . . . . . 11
print character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
print non-matching lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
printable characters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
punct character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
punctuation characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Q
question mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
quiet, silent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
R
range expression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
recursive search. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
regular expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
return status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
rv GREP_COLORS capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
S
searching directory trees. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 8
searching for a pattern. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
sl GREP_COLORS capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
space character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
space characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
subexpression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
suppress binary data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
suppress error messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
symbolic links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 8
T
tab-aligned content lines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
translation of message language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
U
upper character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
upper-case letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
usage summary, printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
usage, examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
using grep, Q&A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
V
variants of grep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
version, printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
W
whitespace characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
with lename prex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
X
xdigit character class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
xdigit class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Z
zero-terminated le names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
zero-terminated lines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8